The Collected Works of Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud

as the dream expresses it. The statement in which my wish is realised sounds less absurd in the second dream than in the first; it is made here with a more skilful utilisation of facts as points of attachment, something like a well-constructed slander, where "there is something in it." For my friend R. had at that time the vote of a professor from the department against him, and my friend N. had himself unsuspectingly furnished me with the material for slander. Nevertheless, I repeat, the dream seems to me to require further elucidation.

      I remember now that the dream contains still another portion which so far our interpretation has not taken into account. After it occurs to me that my friend R. is my uncle, I feel great affection for him. To whom does this feeling belong? For my uncle Joseph, of course, I have never had any feelings of affection. For years my friend R. has been beloved and dear to me; but if I were to go to him and express my feelings for him in terms which came anywhere near corresponding to the degree of affection in the dream, he would doubtless be surprised. My affection for him seems untrue and exaggerated, something like my opinion of his psychic qualities, which I express by fusing his personality with that of my uncle; but it is exaggerated in an opposite sense. But now a new state of affairs becomes evident to me. The affection in the dream does not belong to the hidden content, to the thoughts behind the dream; it stands in opposition to this content; it is calculated to hide the information which interpretation may bring. Probably this is its very purpose. I recall with what resistance I applied myself to the work of interpretation, how long I tried to postpone it, and how I declared the dream to be sheer nonsense. I know from my psychoanalytical treatments how such condemnation is to be interpreted. It has no value as affording information, but only as the registration of an affect. If my little daughter does not like an apple which is offered her, she asserts that the apple has a bitter taste, without even having tasted it. If my patients act like the little girl, I know that it is a question of a notion which they want to suppress. The same applies to my dream. I do not want to interpret it because it contains something to which I object. After the interpretation of the dream has been completed, I find out what it was I objected to; it was the assertion that R. is a simpleton. I may refer the affection which I feel for R. not to the hidden dream thoughts, but rather to this unwillingness of mine. If my dream as compared with its hidden content is disfigured at this point, and is disfigured, moreover, into something opposite, then the apparent affection in the dream serves the purpose of disfigurement; or, in other words, the disfigurement is here shown to be intended: it is a means of dissimulation. My dream thoughts contain an unfavourable reference to R.; in order that I may not become aware of it, its opposite, a feeling of affection for him, makes its way into the dream.

      The fact here recognised might be of universal applicability. As the examples in Section III. have shown, there are dreams which are undisguised wish-fulfilments. Wherever a wish-fulfilment is unrecognisable and concealed, there must be present a feeling of repulsion towards this wish, and in consequence of this repulsion the wish is unable to gain expression except in a disfigured state. I shall try to find a case in social life which is parallel to this occurrence in the inner psychic life. Where in social life can a similar disfigurement of a psychic act be found? Only where two persons are in question, one of whom possesses a certain power, while the other must have a certain consideration for this power. This second person will then disfigure his psychic actions, or, as we may say, he will dissimulate. The politeness which I practise every day is largely dissimulation of this kind. If I interpret my dreams for the benefit of the reader I am forced to make such distortions. The poet also complains about such disfigurement:

      "You may not tell the best that you know to the youngsters."

      The political writer who has unpleasant truths to tell to the government finds himself in the same position. If he tells them without reserve, the government will suppress them—subsequently in case of a verbal expression of opinion, preventatively, if they are to be published in print. The writer must fear censure; he therefore modifies and disfigures the expression of his opinion. He finds himself compelled, according to the sensitiveness of this censure, either to restrain himself from certain particular forms of attack or to speak in allusion instead of direct designations. Or he must disguise his objectionable statement in a garb that seems harmless. He may, for instance, tell of an occurrence between two mandarins in the Orient, while he has the officials of his own country in view. The stricter the domination of the censor, the more extensive becomes the disguise, and often the more humorous the means employed to put the reader back on the track of the real meaning.

The correspondence between the phenomena of the censor and those of dream distortion, which may be traced in detail, justifies us in assuming similar conditions for both. We should then assume in each human being, as the primary cause of dream formation, two psychic forces (streams, systems), of which one constitutes the wish expressed by the dream, while the other acts as a censor upon this dream wish, and by means of this censoring forces a distortion of its expression. The only question is as to the basis of the authority of this second instance³ by virtue of which it may exercise its censorship. If we remember that the hidden dream thoughts are not conscious before analysis, but that the apparent dream content is remembered as conscious, we easily reach the assumption that admittance to consciousness is the privilege of the second instance. Nothing can reach consciousness from the first system which has not first passed the second instance, and the second instance lets nothing pass without exercising its rights and forcing such alterations upon the candidate for admission to consciousness as are pleasant to itself. We are here forming a very definite conception of the "essence" of consciousness; for us the state of becoming conscious is a particular psychic act, different from and independent of becoming fixed or of being conceived, and consciousness appears to us as an organ of sense, which perceives a content presented from another source. It may be shown that psychopathology cannot possibly dispense with these fundamental assumptions. We may reserve a more thorough examination of these for a later time.

If I keep in mind the idea of the two psychic instances and their relations to consciousness, I find in the sphere of politics a very exact analogy for the extraordinary affection which I feel for my friend R., who suffers such degradation in the course of the dream interpretation. I turn my attention to a political state in which a ruler, jealous of his rights, and a live public opinion are in conflict with each other. The people are indignant against an official whom they hate, and demand his dismissal; and in order not to show that he is compelled to respect the public wish, the autocrat will expressly confer upon the official some great honour, for which there would otherwise have been no occasion. Thus the second instance referred to, which controls access to consciousness, honours my friend R. with a profusion of extraordinary tenderness, because the wish activities of the first system, in accordance with a particular interest which they happen to be pursuing, are inclined to put him down as a simpleton.⁴

      Perhaps we shall now begin to suspect that dream interpretation is capable of giving us hints about the structure of our psychic apparatus which we have thus far expected in vain from philosophy. We shall not, however, follow this track, but return to our original problem as soon as we have cleared up the subject of dream-disfigurement. The question has arisen how dreams with disagreeable content can be analysed as the fulfilments of wishes. We see now that this is possible in case dream-disfigurement has taken place, in case the disagreeable content serves only as a disguise for what is wished. Keeping in mind our assumptions in regard to the two psychic instances, we may now proceed to say: disagreeable dreams, as a matter of fact, contain something which is disagreeable to the second instance, but which at the same time fulfils a wish of the first instance. They are wish dreams in the sense that every dream originates in the first instance, while the second instance acts towards the dream only in a repelling, not in a creative manner. If we limit ourselves to a consideration of what the second instance contributes to the dream, we can never understand the dream. If we do so, all the riddles which the authors have found in the dream remain unsolved.

      That the dream actually has a secret meaning, which turns out to be the fulfilment of a wish, must be proved afresh for every case by means of an analysis. I therefore select several dreams which have painful contents and attempt an analysis of them. They are partly dreams of hysterical subjects, which require long preliminary statements, and now and then also an examination of the psychic processes which occur in hysteria. I cannot, however, avoid this added difficulty in